Sunday Night Dinner: September 2008

Monday, September 22, 2008

Chicken soup for the rhinovirus-ridden

It’s totally and completely sad (well, a little sad) that I, at almost 30 years old, call my mother for sympathy every time I get sick. I just have to. I feel like my Mom validates my illness, somehow. Until my Mom feels sorry for me, I am just whiny and annoying. After she tells me “Ooooohhh, you poor thing…,” all of a sudden I am sick, a patient in need of care and attention, completely justified in my whimpers and whines and validated in my illness.

So, if you haven't guessed, I have a cold (or a rhinovirus infection, as we science geeks like to refer to it). I spent the weekend in abject misery, swallowing handfuls of decongestants, which are worth less than their candy coating, as far as my sinuses are concerned. I was preparing myself for a slow and painful death by starvation and neglect (I get dramatic when I am sick) when the man-friend (did we decide to call him the Texan? Yes, let’s shall) swept in with bags of groceries, all set to make me chicken soup. All together now: Aaaawwww.

The soup he made, from America’s Test Kitchen cookbook, may have saved both my life and my mother from 10 more whiny phone calls. The soup was absurdly complex, beginning with a most peculiar recipe for chicken stock.

The recipe starts with a butt ton (technical term here, people) of chicken drumsticks (bones cracked with a cleaver for maximal flavor extraction) which one browns on all sides, in batches in a Dutch oven. The chicken is then allowed to sweat until it releases juices, a step which the cookbook says greatly decreases the simmering time necessary for full flavoring of the stock. After sweating, water is added and the chicken is simmered with bay leaf and sautéed onions. A little less than sixty minutes from the start of this lengthy procedure, the stock is strained and then, and only then, can one start on the soup.

Into the strained stock went big chunks of carrot, celery, onion, shredded chicken, dried thyme, an ear of corn, three handfuls of orzo pasta, and fresh parsley at the very end. Et voila, the most beautiful bowl of chicken soup my rhinovirus-dimmed eyes had ever seen:

The resulting soup was very rich - all the collagen from the chicken drumsticks made the broth thick and velvety. The soup actually set into aspic after a night in the fridge! The chicken itself was moist and flavorful, not rubbery and dead like all chicken coming out of a long-simmering broth. The vegetables though, the vegetables were the best part. The corn absorbed the copious amounts of chicken fat and became the softest, creamiest corn of all time, all while still retaining the snap of the individual kernels. It was divine.

I suspect the soup tastes best when someone makes it for you, unprompted and unselfishly, all the while you blow your nose loudly and whimper about how you are going to die imminently. Have someone make this soup for you next time you are sick. I am pretty sure you will feel better right away. Or at least you will feel your illness has been validated and you are being taken care of.

P.S. The recipe for this whole business is way too long for me to retype and really isn’t the point of this post, which is my feeling sick and whiny. So I won’t type it. Instead, I am going to sit on my couch and swallow more useless decongestants.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

[+/-]

It’s all the same, just a little... not

Laptop is alive, almost back to normal! Thank you for all the lovely thoughts and good luck wishes. I hope to recover from the shock of it all shortly. Should only take another couple of six-packs. Whew. Now let’s get back to business, people.

I just came back from a nine day stay in London. Unlike most of the trips I go on, I wasn’t ready to go home at the end. Not nearly. I really could have used another couple of days walking around the city, sitting in ancient pubs drinking excellent beer, and eating all manner of fried and sausage-related foods. I fell in love (again) with the enormous preponderance of fresh sandwiches, pre-packaged in neat, triangular boxes, ranging in filling from egg salad and cheese to prawn salad (eeek. Kinda sketchy), sold in every coffee shop and market in the city. It has to be the box. I love that triangular box.

Everything in London is familiar, but not quite the same as what I am most used to. It's off by just a couple of degrees. Men’s suits fit better, beer is less carbonated and tastier, the cars drive in unpredictable patterns at predictably high speeds – toward the end of the trip I took to checking right, left, up and down for cars, just to make sure I would not get flattened by a giant red bus of doom speeding from out of nowhere. It worked.

As I mentioned, I was in London for work… and work I did. While the man friend explored London and went to see the galleries I am pissed about missing, I worked. Beh. I did have the evenings, and made the best of them.

The evenings were made up of the obligatory pub fish and chips with mushy peas at a pub near city center (wherever that is), with a light and crisp batter. Fried overload.

Suspiciously green but wonderful – the pea-est peas I have ever had.

There was also traditional pork pie, bought in a stiflingly hot indoor market in Brick Lane, the Indian/Bengali part of town. As if I would skip the Indian/Bengali part of town.

The pork pie was intense – butter-laden handmade crust encasing a slightly gritty filling of ground up pork and spices. It was as the name suggested – pie shell and pork. Wonderful smeared all over with mustard.

Pork pie, the 'after' shot.

The hotel I stayed at served full English breakfast every morning – beans (which I am now addicted to), black pudding, bacon, every kind of egg, stewed tomatoes, mushrooms, sausage, kippers, and all sorts of yogurts, fruits, etc and oh my. The Brits know their breakfast, that is without doubt, but kippers? Really? That’s hardcore, even by my standards.

Unfortunately, I don’t have too many other pictures to share. Most meals were consumed in pubs and either the light was too low for photography, or I was one too many pints past taking pictures. Most often, it was a combination of the two.

The beer… the beer was fabulous. And the people were super nice, the tube was marvelous (yes, Londoners think it’s shite, but come to Boston for a week and then tell me your public transport blows. I think not). In my 9 days there I managed to pick up some sort of bizarre accent and now say “Cheers!” at seemingly random times, and “brilliant” at wholly inappropriate ones. I can’t wait to go back and pick up other Britishisms – preferably ones that don’t involve bad teeth and imminent alcoholism. Though I may be swayed toward the latter, with enough perseverance.